Buddhism in India

The Defeat of Buddhism in India 173

expanded rapidly; these grants were most often made to Brahman

settlers. While Kosambi emphasises their economic function and

interprets these gifts as resulting from the technological knowledge

the Brahmans provided for extending cultivation, the more likely

motivation was political. Peasants themselves possessed the tech-

nological knowledge for agriculture; what they did not have, and

Brahmans did, was access to the sacred texts that legitimized kings

and provided a basis of knowledge for education. The shastras

allowed the Brahmans who studied them, as Herman Kulke has

noted, ‘a command of a considerable body of knowledge on state

administration and political economy’ (Kulke 1997: 237).

Brahmans were more of a political specialists than technical spe-

cialists. From this group came not only priests, but also councillors,

administrators and clerical staff for the kingdoms. They helped the

establishment of local administration, not only by running the

administration themselves in the villages they received in grants,

but also by providing resources to help royal administration in sur-

rounding villages in the same locality. At the higher level they pro-

vided legitimacy by creating genealogies and origin mythologies

identifying the kings as Kshatriyas and organising impressive

ceremonial functions that invested the king with all the paraphernalia

and mystique of Hindu royalty; at the lower level they propagan-

dised the mystique of social supremacy and political power. They

taught the population, they established ritual and priestly relations

with the prominent households of the region, they promulgated

caste and the rights of kings. In contrast to the Buddhist monas-

teries, they provided no social structures and no ideologies that

could facilitate revolt.

In contrast to Buddhism and Jainism, Brahmanism offered kings

very unencumbered benefits. Brahmanism offered them status and

legitimacy without making any moral demands on them. The very

extravagance of the depiction of self-sacrificing kings in the tradi-

tions of Buddhism and Jainism shamed those who were not

inclined to meet this ideal. The Tamil epic Silapaddikaram, for

instance, is full of stories of kings who simply died because of their

moral transgressions; its central story revolves around the death of

the king and queen and the near-destruction of the great city of

Madurai, because of kingly injustice. Such stories also gave legiti-

macy to popular resistance to royal injustice. If we contrast this

with Manu’s description of the divinity of kings and his depiction

would fade with time can be seen in Taranatha, who notes in
regard to Pushyamitra Shunga that ‘as predicted, the first 500 years
constituted the period of the flourish of the Law of the Teacher,
and the next 500 years the period of its decay’ (Taranatha1990:
121) and writes that ‘by the influence of time, the Law was also not
as bright as before.’ Thus Taranatha’s own interpretation is often
one that simply sees a natural process of decay, interpreted with
periodic re-establishment of the Dhamma by brilliant Bodhisattvas
and teachers. His very way of telling stories of constant destruction
and recovery of manuscripts and teachings suggests the fundamen-
tal transitoriness taught by Buddhism. At the same time, also
shown in the stories is a many-levelled, fierce and often violent con-
flict at the social level.

The Alliance Between

Brahmans and Kings

The strength behind the Brahmanical revival was royal patronage
(for an almost identical argument see Weber 1996: 130). Whatever
influence the growing Vaishnava or Shaivite cults, (and not all
expressions of these were within the framework of Brahmanism)
began to exert within ‘society’, state power was crucial. It was ulti-
mately the kings who enforced either the exclusivist Brahmanic
varnashrama dharmaor the tolerant Buddhist Dhamma. After Ashoka,
up to the 7th century or so, most kings patronised both religions—
which was encouraged by Buddhism, discouraged by Brahmanism—
and we have no very certain historical knowledge about how many
very fervent Buddhist kings (or queens) there may have been. Most
rulers were probably opportunistic. However, it is a striking fact
that most of the new regional dynasties in India that arose after the
7th and 8th centuries—the Karkotas and Pratiharas of the north,
the Rashtrakutas of the Deccan, and the Pandyas and Pallavas of
the south—were supporters of Brahmanism and established cen-
tralised state cults focusing on Hindu image worship. The sole
exception was the Pala dynasty in Bengal (about 750 CE—1161 CE).
It was this royal patronage that proved decisive in the defeat of
Buddhism.
A key aspect of this patronage was the famous land grants,
which began to become prominent by the 6th century and then

172 Buddhism in India